Book It, Buzz: Trying something different this time ... Part 2

For years now, autographed books coming direct from publishers -- or direct from the authors themselves -- have been an affordable way to collect ink from notable names in all realms of pop culture.

It's not a perfect system with stamped autos, fakes and autopens sometimes in the mix -- a problem for publishers to catch as they are not authenticators -- but thanks to dedicated collectors on the Blowout Cards Forum and elsewhere, those problems often get caught and fixed ... or at least become well-known enough to avoid if it's an issue that goes uncorrected. Getting ink in-person is always best -- book tours still happen, of course -- but landing autographed editions from publishers, online sellers or celebs themselves via their websites or other appearances are common.

Our latest subject and autograph in this ongoing series? Well, this time it's once again something totally different (just like last month) as nothing recently released in the books realm has grabbed my attention. Instead, I turned to something from the comics world -- a category with plenty of signed stuff out there regularly and ink flowing.

THE RUNDOWN ... 
The Book: Xena: Warrior Princess & Joxer: Warrior Prince No. 1
The Signer: Ron Lim (interior pencils) -- via Dynamic Forces (numbered edition /1,500)
The Specs: Topps Comics -- released on Nov. 1, 1997 (32 pages)
The Price: $9.99 ($2.95 cover price)
The Spot: eBay (fixed price)

Why it’s Buzz-worthy: I’m still in a holding pattern as to whether I want to pick off more publisher edition signed book books for this series or expand its scope to regularly include stuff like this -- or even music, which regularly has label-backed signed editions in its industry -- on a regular basis. This one was another quick and easy find for me as, just like last time, this popped up from a seller where I pick off all kinds of retro stuff online, and, since the price wasn't risky. One thing I didn’t realize here at that point? The artist who signed the book didn’t do the cover -- I didn’t even think about that -- though I knew his name from his work back when I was a comics regular. I was way out of the realm by 1997 when Topps was making comic books -- give them time ... maybe they’ll return --  and when this TV franchise was a little bit of everywhere with Lucy Lawless (Xena) after its arrival in 1995. I’m 99.9 percent sure this is my first Topps comic book as well as many of their titles were super niche and, well, not for me even if I had been a regular buyer of comics back then. Dynamic Forces is a long-running dealer for signed books, so I had no qualms there for the price, though there’s no matching element between the cert and the book itself (aka matching attached holograms) just a hand-written serial-number that could be replicated to a regular book if somebody really felt the need to fake one of these. (I give that a low, low probability in this case.)

Why this item: This is a textbook example 0f a lot of the signed stuff out there in the comic book realm -- artists, writers and others such as actors -- can often be found on signed books. Sometimes they match the visual, sometimes they don’t. Hey, at least this one has an art cover -- he even signed photo cover versions for Dynamic Forces as part of this /1,500 edition.

Chase ink on cards: Lim does have at least a couple dozen certified autograph cards between sketch cards, a rainbow of ink cards in the 2023 Marvel Platinum release and some stuff from other Marvel releases. Many of them check in between $20 and $200 when it comes to eBay asking prices -- that mostly depends on what type/volume of card it is. Meanwhile, signed books like this can be found easily and more cheaply -- lower than even this price.

The Bottom Line: This was an inexpensive pick-up with some certification ... and it shows how there can be a lot found here without breaking the bank. That’s collector-friendly to a dabbler like me ... and I don’t mind it.

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